Russia in fiction

A book blog about Russia in English-language fiction

Tag: Helen Dunmore

After Silence by Jessica Gregson (2022)

15 December, 2022 /

The Russia in Fiction book blog has been on hold for much of 2022. Writing reviews of stories about Russia has seemed too frivolous whilst the reality of warfare has come to Ukraine. Reading about Russia and Ukraine in the daily news has been enough these long months, leaving little desire left for leisure reading to feature the Russo-centric plots that are grist to Russia in Fiction’s blog mill. We have instead turned to other settings for escapist thrillers and more literary novels alike.

But a novel of war has —temporarily at least— released the blog brake. And in that sense, After Silence seems a fitting title.

Jessica Gregson’s After Silence marks both exception and return. We read it at the end of summer and feel constrained by the relative lack of publicity and reviews concerning this fine book to tell Russia in Fiction’s readers how beautifully written and deftly constructed Gregson’s story is.

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The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (2010)

16 September, 2021 /

The Betrayal is not the first book reviewed on the Russia in Fiction blog that is set in Leningrad in the opening years of the 1950s. That honour goes to City of Ghosts, which is set in 1951. Helen Dunmore’s novel takes place a year later, in 1952.

In both cases, the key fact in relation to setting is that Stalin was still alive.

Before Stalin’s death in 1953, the feeling that the demise of his repressive dictatorship was long overdue was particularly keenly felt in Leningrad, a ‘hero city’ that suffered more than most during the Second World War.

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